{"id":93928,"date":"2020-12-04T09:32:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T15:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=93928"},"modified":"2020-12-04T10:01:41","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T16:01:41","slug":"pilsen-and-little-village-neighborhoods-have-struggled-against-big-industry-for-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/pilsen-and-little-village-neighborhoods-have-struggled-against-big-industry-for-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods have struggled against big industry for decades"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Natalie Eilbert<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Lead and other heavy metals have laced everyday life in Pilsen and Little Village since the Industrial Revolution. Whether detected in the air at quadruple the national standard or enmeshed in the soil, countless missteps and degrees of negligence at the industry level have left these neighborhoods with a big, dangerous mess.<\/p>\n

When Hilco contractors imploded the shuttered Crawford Station smokestack in April, Pilsen and Little Village residents were blanketed in a cloud of chemical particulates for days. Images of the incident went viral. Hilco Development issued an apology and fired a contractor, but for residents, it was only the latest in a vicious cycle. Light and heavy industries along the industrial corridor have been leaking volatile particulates into the air for as long as there has been industry here.<\/p>\n

According to P.E.R.R.O. (Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization), the brass and bronze foundry H. Kramer & Company had been releasing an average of 2,544 pounds of lead into Pilsen from 1994 to 2003\u2014this environmental injustice was the original push to form P.E.R.R.O. The US Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s Toxic Release Inventory facility report on H. Kramer & Company puts the amount of lead emitted into the environment at a staggering 41,496 pounds over that same 10-year period.<\/p>\n

For over a decade, Fisk Generating Station, another facility in Pilsen, has been pummeling the air with hundreds of thousands of pounds of barium, lead, manganese, hydrochloric acid and nine other dangerous compounds.<\/p>\n

The adage goes that what goes up must come down, and this is where soil experts come into play. Shelby Hatch, a chemist at Northwestern University, specializes in soil contamination. In 2003, she and her students joined P.E.R.R.O. to collect and analyze soil in the Pilsen neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was known that [power plants] were operating without proper controls. And so there was lots of particulate matter,\u201d Hatch said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re burning coal and not cleaning it\u2014as if there is such a thing\u2014you have all these particulates, and the particulates themselves are causing health issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chicago has long been struck by higher rates of asthma than the national average. And Hatch said that asthma-related issues are only one of the many health problems exposure to particulates can have on the body: They can exacerbate lung diseases, respiratory illnesses and cardiovascular illnesses, too.<\/p>\n

Pilsen residents have filed complaints with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for years against facilities like H. Kramer & Company, Fisk Generating Station, Sims Metal Management, Lakeside Lithography LLC and others. Tests and observations by the EPA have led to remediation, as in the case of H. Kramer & Company\u2019s massive soil cleanup, but they have also gone nowhere, after tests revealed nontoxic levels of chemicals.<\/p>\n

Still, even if the chemicals being released aren\u2019t technically toxic, University of Illinois at Chicago professor Donald Wink said that unpleasant chemical odors degrade the quality of life, distract students from learning and, importantly, alert the brain that something isn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have these feedback mechanisms with odor that are associated with avoiding dangerous situations, and they are visceral,\u201d Wink said. \u201cPart of the Illinois code is against noxious odors\u2014that\u2019s because somebody\u2019s recognizing that it doesn\u2019t have to be toxic to wreck your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Troy Hernandez, a volunteer with P.E.R.R.O., a lifelong resident of Pilsen, and the Green Party 25th Ward Committeeman, said that he and other volunteers spend a good deal of their time writing emails to the federal or Illinois EPA and that it\u2019s a lot of waiting. Sometimes, they\u2019ll show the EPA their own tests in the process and additional attention is paid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it goes through the bureaucratic process and that takes years, but it actually results in millions of dollars in new backyards, $100,000 in fines, changes to things,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cAnd so when you\u2019re working on the timescale of decades … it\u2019s not really glorious work.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Hernandez and many other volunteers who are forced to work at this glacial pace, it\u2019s this slow grind that eventually proves successful.<\/p>\n

Looking beyond the recent Hilco implosion, this timeline follows the last decade of Clean Air Act violations, settlements and environmental justice incidents in Pilsen and Little Village.<\/p>\n\n\n